Any ability to off-load common images / avatars / etc to a CDN would be nice to be able to do. Right now I am cheating by using Google App Server.
Hi Cory, and welcome to XF! Re: CDN, it's something that's been suggested though it's hard to find given that it's 3 characters . Checkout http://xenforo.com/community/threads/cdn.182/ , I'd chime in on there with your opinion. Enjoy!
As others have said. Might I be able to ask how you are currently implementing Google App Engine as the CDN on your forum? I assume you're syncing files up there? I've got a website running ALL static content, except jQuery, from Google App Engine. Suffice to say it's fine. However, simple template edits are sufficient to satisfy the craving for putting often used content to the CDN. Additionally, it will help to set ETags and Expires. Many of us dive into the CDN without looking first at what can be done on the server-site side. For example, just set up a cookie-less domain and serve content from that. Not too difficult
Here is the basis of what I followed: http://www.digitalistic.com/2008/06/09/10-easy-steps-to-use-google-app-engine-as-your-own-cdn/ I then took the base VB images directory and uploaded all the images.... Then in VB admincp, I went to Style Manager, StyleVars Scroll down to ImagePaths and change.... Granted not a "true" CDN, but give your site one more content delivery system
For the bigger forums out there, it makes a lot of sense if we could place our images, scripts in CDN for faster performance for our users. Right now, one can do this in vBulletin... but this could one of the defining features of XF. We could start off with integration with Amazon S3/Cloudfront and then expand going forward. Karan
Ive seen suggestions for CDN etc and it works great for avatars, js & attachment thumbnails. Now there is CDN support in Xenforo, I thought id make a specific request/suggestion for full sized attachments. I have all of our attachments viewable to the public and would like to have an option for these to be served by CDN. This addition would make me complete
If all files are public you use them with CDN. I think you can use a sub domain for attachments. I don't know is it easy for a busy site to sync all attachments across CDN nodes.
If its possible to use a CDN for attachments, I'm yet to find out how. As far as I understand and have seen from my personal experience, it only serves the attachment thumbnails, avatars, js and style images at this stage. If you use a pull-origin CDN, on the first request for the file the CDN will grab the file from your server if not in cache and download it to the CDN cache. All future requests will serve that file from the CDN until it expires from cache. I've found by serving full attachments from the CDN can save up to 30% on bandwidth every day - probably more on much busier forums with more attachments.
*bump* The insert Full Image option really defeats the purpose of having any kind of CDN option for xenForo attachments if it doesn't work with Full Size images. All of my members on one site insist on inserting every image as Full Size which puts the resources fully on my server to serve up the full size image.
I second that, atfer installing MaxCDN, I've noticed the full images in a post were not displayed from the cache. I've tried to search a [tricky] way without result. I guess that's something which should be changed internally, or at least an option to have the original images in /data.
Mine too - crossing fingers this gets implemented in the next release. Our bandwidth requirements have tripled from the server because of this since moving to Xenforo (was using VBSEO with CDN integration)
